Over the last two decades, we’ve seen online gambling go from a niche pastime to a massive global industry — the online casino industry alone is worth more than $60bn worldwide. This huge growth has been largely driven by the affordability of mobile technology, and advancements in software and hardware that allow the smartphones and tablets we carry in our pockets and bags to match consoles and PCs as a legitimate platform for gaming.

One of the world’s fastest developing online gambling markets is Africa, largely due to the increased mobile penetration and infrastructure rapidly growing around large areas of the continent. Africa has a long and storied history with gambling, from horse racing to gaming halls, and the transition online has been a smooth progression. Gamers in Sub-Saharan Africa are now able to place bets via online sportsbooks or enjoy the massive range of games available in online casinos, all on their mobiles. Let’s look at some of the most popular forms of gambling across the continent.

It’s hard to find firm documentary evidence of gambling and the forms it took in pre-colonial times, mainly due to the oral histories and traditions of the various nations and factions across the continent. We do know that Ancient Africans and Egyptians played board games and games of chance, and, as with most areas of the world, some form of horse racing has been popular across the continent.

When Africa was colonised, Europeans brought with them their traditions of horse racing and gambling on other sports, as well as card games and other casino games that were popular in Europe at the time, although these would have been largely unavailable to the African people. However, it did put in place a framework whereby casinos and sports betting grew in popularity and flourished in many areas.

The evolution of online gambling in Africa has begun rapid development, and online casino games are on the way to becoming the biggest attraction in a region where sports and sports betting are more traditional pastimes. South Africa has by far the largest online casino scene, one of the best examples being review sites like playcasino.co.za which offers a wide variety of online casino games, bonuses, and operators. But other Sub-Saharan African nations are making steady progress — Nigeria is the other big market for players enjoying classic casino games on their phones and tablets, followed by Tanzania, Kenya, and Ghana.

Online casinos take advantage of powerful mobile devices to bring players ever-more immersive experiences, such as live-dealer poker, blackjack, and roulette, which common options are offered by most operators. And slot games are also worth mentioning —they’ve always been among the most popular games in casinos online and off, due to their simplicity and fun. But game developers have begun to build on this simplicity to bring titles to life, incorporating a wide variety of themes, cutting-edge graphics, and immersive gameplay. With Africa’s youthful, tech-savvy population, it’s no surprise that the online casino market is rapidly expanding, even to more remote areas without traditional infrastructure.

There’s no denying it, Africa is a sports-mad continent, and betting on sporting action has been a popular pastime for many years. Unsurprisingly for such a large and diverse continent different sports are favoured in different regions — for example, many Southern African nations have strong cricketing traditions, whereas nations such as Kenya and Ethiopia have produced some of history’s most successful Olympic distance runners. However, one unifying sport is football — the world’s most popular sport is also Africa’s.

The continent has a strong history in the FIFA World Cup, with Morocco becoming the first African semi-finalist in history in Qatar 2022 (Ghana came agonizingly and controversially close in South Africa in 2010). Africans love to wager on football, be it domestic leagues, international fixtures, or the elite European leagues of England, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany, where many players from the continent compete among the world’s best. Online sports books have opened up new ways to bet for Africans, with a wide variety of options including in-game betting and live odds, as well as accumulators. 

Online gambling has taken off in a major way in Africa. This is due to a variety of reasons — obviously, technology and infrastructure are playing a major role, but a young, passionate, and tech-savvy population are the real drivers behind the booming industry.